Resurrected Bianchi, cow art, unions (good), cops (bad), ephemera

Cops lie, cheat, and steal. This is a well-documented fact. Some cops caught committing perjury are still getting paid (by me and you.)

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I Wake Close to Morning by Mary Oliver

Why do people keep asking to see
     God’s identity papers
when the darkness opening into morning
     is more than enough?
Certainly any god might turn away in disgust.
Think of Sheba approaching
     the kingdom of Solomon.
Do you think she had to ask,
     “Is this the place?”

I’ve long maintained anarchism is more of a theological position than a political position. Not that I can define “religion” or “civics” much less “poetry.” I’ve tried. Anyway. Mary Oliver’s poetry showcases an anarchist spirituality. 

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James Baldwin needs no introduction. This is worth reading: An Open Letter to My Sister Miss Angela Davis. He saw America/democracy/prisons for what they were/are.  

From the essay:

We know that a man is not a thing and is not to be placed at the mercy of things. We know that air and water belong to all mankind and not merely to industrialists. We know that a baby does not come into the world merely to be the instrument of someone else’s profit. We know that democracy does not mean the coercion of all into a deadly—and, finally, wicked—mediocrity but the liberty for all to aspire to the best that is in him, or that has ever been.

We know that we, the blacks, and not only we, the blacks, have been, and are, the victims of a system whose only fuel is greed, whose only god is profit. We know that the fruits of this system have been ignorance, despair, and death, and we know that the system is doomed because the world can no longer afford it—if, indeed, it ever could have. And we know that, for the perpetuation of this system, we have all been mercilessly brutalized, and have been told nothing but lies, lies about ourselves and our kinsmen and our past, and about love, life, and death, so that both soul and body have been bound in hell.

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I’m encouraged by the number of ordinary people, many without a clear political camp, mobilizing to disrupt ICE. 

“I want their morale as low as possible,” he said, “because a team with low morale is ineffective.”

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I’m a union guy. I love being in a union. I love helping my fellow workers when management wrongfully withholds wages, engages in illegal retribution, or otherwise does the bidding of Capital at the expense of us, the organized workers. 

My solidarity in practice as a shop steward means I’m inevitably going to defend cop-lovers, Trump-voters, obnoxious homophobes, lazy xenophobes, generally unpleasant people, etc. from management’s various anti-worker actions. I’m not complaining here. And I do like most of my fellow workers, but solidarity isn’t about who you like. It’s about whose side you’re on. You can go through life driven by the discipline of your hopes and ideological commitments or by your resentments. Solidarity forever. You can be a worker with bad opinions but you’re still somebody selling your labor and I’ll do what I can to make that less shitty  

Solidarity with workers means abolishing police and police have unions. Lots of people think this is tricky territory but I don’t. Police unions are awful and we should all disaffiliate with them.  I’m anti-police-union because I’m pro-union. I like cake. I’m pro-cake.  But I don’t eat urinal cakes. This isn’t a contradiction. It’s a consistent pro-yummy-treats position. Be consistently pro-worker and anti-Capital. 

Here's an article in Jacobin: The Bad Kind of Unionism

When police unions have widened their gaze beyond issues like compensation and working conditions, it’s been almost exclusively to advance conservative ends. “Police,” as Williams puts it, “organize as police, not workers.”

This is an important point. Police are a major partisan political influence. Get called anti-cop and you have no shot at public office. Good thing I'm not seeking public office.

I subscribe to Jacobin. I read like 1/3 of every other issue. I keep telling myself I’m going to build a Little Free Magazine/Zine Library to alleviate my magazine-subscription guilt. Basic design idea: shallow cabinet with plexiglass doors, on the inside four or six grocery-store-checkout-aisle style magazine display racks. Beside that smaller racks of the same style for zines (8.5x11 folded in half type). The whole thing’s legs probably planted in cement at the bottom of a planter. Top off with soil and add some flowers. The problem with most of those Little Free Library cabinets is they get too cluttered, they’re too deep, not enough clear visibility of what’s in there without opening it up and moving things around. Magazines and zines need to be face-out, not spine-out. If you build me a little free magazine library like this I will assemble you one functional commuter bicycle from trash-picked parts. This is a real offer. 

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Here’s a trash-picked Bianchi Ocelot. 

I’d stripped down and rebuilt a red Bianchi Ocelot a few years back and commuted on it regularly for a couple years. I eventually passed it on to my friend Jess. Somebody abandoned a mangled blue one at Hart & Kensington this summer. For not the first or last time, I got a text from a friend saying there was a remnant of a bike abandoned on the sidewalk so I went and rescued it. One wheel (very bent), no brakes, a wrong-sized seatpost shimmed with duct tape, twisted derailer and bent hanger, rusty crusty chain. This text happened to be from the very same Jess riding the old red Ocelot. 

This one’s for Allison. Allison, if you are reading this, come pick up your bike. It’s ready. 

Philly is relatively flat, 1x drivetrains are easy to operate, plus I had the cassette, derailer, chain, and shifter in a very grimy ziplock bag in a tub labeled “shifters and derailers.”

You think when Jesus said “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and thieves break in and steal,” he failed to consider all the cool shit in the bins in my basement?

Wheels: Front one is from the pile of cool shit in my basement. $0. Rear one I bought new. Maybe $80? Alexrims and Shimano hub. Pretty good. Can’t all be free. 

Crankset: I have a tub labeled “cranks and chainrings.” This Shimano 600 crank used to be on the Clem. It’s beautiful. Not sure what bike it came off originally. Probably another dumpsterbike. No idea how many teeth on that chainring. It was on there from some other project. It works. Pedals are plastic/composite BMX pedals, my usual first choice for commuter bikes. $20-ish. I hate small pedals. 

Bought the seat post new ($25?), had the weird comfort saddle in the bin labeled “saddles and seat posts.” Maybe it sucks. I don't know. That's for Allison to decide.

Tires from the basement tire pile. Schwalbe Marathons do everything a bike tire is supposed to do. "They feel like wooden wagon wheels," some guy on a bicycle forum somewhere says as his ass is sprayed with tubeless sealant from running over a single pebble of glass on his ballet-slipper-supple ultralight performance tires. These are tires for the streets of Kensington. A+. Good tires. Brake pads, tubes, and rim tape from Keystone Bicycle Co, your friendly neighborhood cooperatively owned bike shop. 

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“It’s me and dad riding a bike in the forest.” He’s a surprisingly competent illustrator for a four-year-old. 

I love him so much. 

“A parrot on a tree.”

“Me and mom walking to the garden and there’s a poop on the ground and flies flying around it and eating the poop.”

“A cow and a bicycle.”

Behold the bovine crucifer. 

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Good essay by Ed Simon. 

The creeds aren’t so much about making God make sense as about defying those who would make God make sense. As someone who has bristled at the colloquial usage of the words “unorthodox” and “heretical” for my entire adult life this was a refreshing read. It also has one of my favorite qualities in an essay: it’s short. 

Ed Simon is a gift. Seems like every single day he’s publishing another essay.  He made a very fun book about demons. It has one of my favorite features in a book: cool pictures. Very few people write competently about religion. Ed Simon does.  

He interviewed me once.

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Here's an unusual icicle.

Now you've seen it.

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I love the 5 bus. Favorite Septa bus. It's icy out there and I biked Francis a few places and slid a bit and thought, yeah, might let somebody else operate the locomotion devices. You get to look around, bump into some friends, talk with strangers about I Remember When This Was [the thing the building you're passing used to be.] If that isn't nice I don't know what is.

Oh Mary. I like riding the bus with you. 

Bye. Ride a bus or bike today. It's sunshiny!